


Scraps

by thatoldbroad



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-07-17 06:13:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16089719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatoldbroad/pseuds/thatoldbroad
Summary: A collection of mostly unrelated CMBYN ficlets.1) Leave No Trace (Timmy/Armie, warning: major character death)2) 100% Perfect (Elio/Oliver, CMBYN retold through Murakami's 100% Perfect Girl)3) A Perfect Match (Timmy/Armie, a day in the life of one pining Timothee Chalamet)4) Keep Me In Your Mirror (Timmy/Armie, that in-between a break-up)5) Destination (Timmy/Armie, Armie finds Timmy asleep on the hotel sofa)6) White Line (Timmy/Armie, there's a white line of semen crusted under Timmy's pants from an earlier fuck) *repost*





	1. Leave No Trace

**Author's Note:**

> "Without him, existence is a burden and this lovely world a grave." - on a placard next to this Delacroix [lithograph](https://art.famsf.org/ferdinand-victor-eug%C3%A8ne-delacroix/marguerite-au-rouet-196330851) from Goethe's Faust, at The Met.
> 
> I couldn't get it out of my mind. It kept bugging me to write _this_.
> 
> (Interestingly, the SF museum said it differently: "Without him, existence is only a heavy burden. The world so beautiful is only a tomb in his absence.")

Armie learns about the car crash third hand from a friend who learns about it on Twitter. Trending: Timothee Chalamet Killed In Tragic Accident. 

_Oh my god,_ the text had said, with a link to an article. It doesn't ask if he's okay. It presumes that he isn't. As if theirs is a collective experience. A shared empathy with equal parts expended in loss. Because the friend doesn't know about them. No one does.

And it means nothing to him or anyone else that he had been asleep when it happened, sheltered in a First Class cubicle on his way to Munich, where they had planned to meet briefly in between obligations. Share a coffee, a kiss, the latest gossip. Hold hands for the briefest moment in public while pretending that it's just happenstance, a normal accident from a hug between friends as they prepared to part again.

The day of the funeral is hot. The sun blindingly bright. Sweat collects at his brow as he peers up at it, frowning against its apathy. It's rigid cheerfulness feels like a rebuke to their entourage, who are uniformly dressed in black and weeping. There is so much weeping. But not by him. He stands like an island in the crowd, along with the few stunned into an outward appearance of stoicism. Life goes on for them: the weepers. Heartbreak on their sleeve and pain digested openly while he continues to exist in a world he refuses to abandon. A world still intact and unaffected, where tomorrow is still a possibility.

This is not happening. _Not happening not happening not happening._ Like a gnat in his ear.

The first stage of grief is denial.

Fuck denial. Fuck this shit. Fuck everything. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

He's invited back to the Hell's Kitchen apartment, one among the selected few. A friend that's considered like family. A consolation. But no one consoles him. He stands apart from those designated for it: mother, father, sister, grandmother. Not partner-brother-lover-friend. Air, water, blood, and heart. _Him._ His. Them. Their secret.

And it's unfair and irrational and small of him to be bitter and jealous, but he is. He should get an _I'm sorry for your loss_. Or some other trite, meaningless thing that people hand out like pennies because what else? What else can they say?

He excuses himself to go to the bathroom and takes a detour to Timmy's room. He has to hunt for it. He's seen it only once, during a Timmy-tour and Timmy had been too embarrassed to linger. Those Timmy-tours. The last had been in Nova Scotia: a hike by the ocean, a view from a lighthouse, and a seaside shack where they had shared two plates of lobsters, fish, a burger, and fries. They didn't stay the night. Why didn't they stay the night?

Doors open then close to reveal other bedrooms, a closet, an office. Tiny, compartmentalized spaces that brim with furniture and things, and Timmy's room is no different. It's all _boy_. Blues and greens and the walls still papered with posters of his heroes. There's Kid Cudi. Maybe even Kid Cudi deserves an _I'm sorry for your loss_.

He idles at the doorway afflicted by hesitance, a sense that he might be intruding. He was never given access here, to this sacred place, even if he does hold memories that were made in it. What will become of this room? He expects that it's destined for no man's land. Like the small room in his Los Angeles home that Timmy claimed as his each time he visited. Simultaneously too much and not enough, now.

Not enough. That's all he's been left with.

He enters. Along the edges of a dresser, he runs his fingers. T-shirts, socks, and underwear are stored in the drawers. He sinks his hands in them, gathers fabric and brings it to his face, and sniffs. He does the same with the clothing that hangs in the closet. None smell like _him_.

The bed was hastily made. The center is still wrinkled and wears the impress of the body that had been outstretched on top of it. He imagines: limbs flung out, or contained and shivering, as they tended after it got cold at night and the blanket had inevitably been kicked to the floor. Next to it, he kneels. He lays first his palm, then his cheek. Inhales. A lump forms in his throat, but he resists. _Just a little longer_ , he begs.

But then he weeps.


	2. 100% Perfect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CMBYN reimagined through Haruki Murakami's [On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning](http://cinderellainrubbershoes.tumblr.com/post/787142487/haruki-murakami-on-seeing-the-100-perfect-girl).

One wet and humid afternoon in July, while waiting on the subway platform of the 66th Street/Lincoln Center station, Oliver saw the 100% perfect boy. 

And he thought: look at that hair. It hung around the boy’s face in scraggly curls and made him look like a street urchin who had been pulled from the Hudson River after accidentally falling into it from leaning too far past a railing. It was just raining now, but the storm had been predicted to be like another Hurricane Sandy. No self-respecting New Yorker would have left the house without an umbrella. 

The boy didn't look like a New Yorker. He didn't look like a tourist either. He seemed to be one of those in-between types that passed through the City for a few years to see if they could "make it there" the Frank Sinatra way. Oliver had been that type. Maybe that was why he could cut the kid a break and didn’t judge him too hard or mark him as _stupid_ , like it was an inherent, immutable character flaw that he didn't have an umbrella. Oliver would have written him off right then and there if he had been that kind of person. But he wasn't.

In fact, the boy had an opposite effect. Oliver felt a strange, urgent impulse to bring him home and dry him off, feed him something warm like soup, and wrap him in the thickest, softest blanket Oliver owned. Or at the very least, he was tempted to give the boy his umbrella. That would leave Oliver defenseless, but in exchange he would get sheer joy from doing something nice for the boy. You couldn’t put a price on that. He’d be skipping the five blocks home on that high.

Oliver was not the kind of person to believe in instant love. But the boy changed him, that day.

Maybe it was the hunch in his shoulders or that he could read what the boy was thinking on his face: _is this where I’m supposed to be? Am in the right place, at the right time, doing what I’m supposed to be doing?_ He had caught the same thing in glimpses at times. From men who looked like they were carved from marble and had walked straight off the cover of a high fashion magazine, or boys whose faces belonged on posters plastered on the walls of a teenager’s bedroom. But Oliver didn’t stay enthralled. Not for longer than a few minutes if his curiosity didn’t result in more, like a mutual hello, and this boy’s looks, truthfully, paled in comparison. Blow dried and at his best, no doubt he would still be a dime a dozen in New York City. Nothing special at all. But Oliver couldn’t stop staring. It was weird.

To Oliver, he was the most beautiful boy in the world.

_

“Yesterday I saw the 100% perfect boy,” Oliver told someone the following day.

“Really?” he said. “Did he have a nice ass?”

“I don’t think so. I couldn’t tell. He was skinny.”

“You’re type, then?”

“That part, yeah. The rest? I don’t know. He was pretty, but an ordinary pretty. Like every other guy I see on the subway on any given day. Even today – dark hair, nice eyes, stood next to me on my way to work. The kind of guy I’d take home for a fuck. But that’s it. Not to, like, ask about his dreams or if he even believed in dreams, or if he thought that people recycled through lifetime after lifetime to search for each other. That’s the kind of stuff that went through my head when I saw this boy.”

“Weird.”

“I know.”

“So,” he said, impatient to get to the conclusion. “Did you get his number?”

_

The boy didn’t get on the next train that arrived and instead sat on the corner seat of the bench closest to the exit, a few feet from where Oliver stood leaning against a column. He hugged his backpack to his chest, looking not just lost but lonely.

Oliver had an appointment with a student at the university where he taught. The subject line of her email had said “Urgent,” but really it was just an existential crisis. The kind of thing that might keep someone up late at night in a mild panic, but by morning found that she was still intact. Life went on. The girl could wait, he decided. He sent a text message to his assistant to reschedule the meeting. He didn’t get on the train either.

The boy glanced in his direction. Oliver’s breath caught in his throat. It was the 100% perfect moment to say something.

But what could he say?

“Excuse me, do I know you? You look familiar.”

Terrible. The least original pick-up line ever invented in history.

“Is this seat taken?”

Obviously, it wasn’t. And then he’d have to sit, and who knows what’s happened on that bench and when it was last cleaned, if ever. And though he wanted nothing more than to have a conversation with the boy, he preferred to do it standing.

Oliver could just tell the truth, for once. “Hi, you don’t know me. But I want to know you. I think you’re 100% perfect. I’ve never felt this way about anyone. And I can’t explain why I feel this way about you, not really. But I do.”

Would the boy believe him? And if he did, would he think that Oliver was crazy? That Oliver was that _guy_ \- the one you should never make eye contact with and definitely not sit next to on the train? Or worse, a pervert? But maybe the boy would see right through him and know that he was sincere. That he was harmless, or that he would try his best to be toward the boy and that if he happened to hurt him – a likelihood because Oliver wasn’t 100% perfect – well, he would apologize. Sorry, he would say. Forgive me?

But what if the boy apologized to Oliver instead? Sorry, but you’re not the 100% perfect boy for me. Oliver would be crushed. What if he didn't recover from it? He could see that happening. He might carry that heartbreak from his twenties to his thirties, and from his thirties to his forties and so on, and wear it like armor so that no one could get near him again, or would want to, not completely. All that would be left is a husk. A bitter, shriveled up version of himself and who would want that?

Another train arrived. They didn’t get on that one either.

The boy pulled a notebook from his backpack – sheet music. The pages were decorated in the secret lines and curves of musical notes. Had the boy written them? It would make sense. Julliard was just down the street from this station. He could be a genius, a perfectionist that toiled until morning. That might explain the bags under his eyes or why he didn’t have an umbrella. Might be the absent-minded type, too.

The boy looked over his shoulder and suddenly got to his feet. He was heading for the exit stairs. Oliver jerked forward, pulled by his orbit.

“Wait!”

The word shattered their bubble of existence. It had been silent save for the girl thrumming a guitar and Oliver’s shout had been louder. The boy was looking back at him now. Oliver’s heartbeat thumped in his ears: say it. Say anything. And inconceivably the only thing that came to mind was a story. It began “Once upon a summer” and ended “Tragic, don’t you think?” Far too elaborate a pitch for the boy to stay, but all of it came to him in a rush.

_

Once upon a summer, an American boy traveled to Italy and stayed with a family in a bedroom that belonged to the son, who was forced to give it up each season for his father’s latest young academic mentee. The American was twenty-five and the boy seventeen, and even though the American felt instantly attracted to him, the age gap made him hesitant to engage in more than a casual friendship. Besides, the boy disliked the American at first.

“Later,” the American had a tendency to say, as a way to end a conversation or exit an interaction.

And the boy tended to frown at him each time.

But a friendship did develop. A third living thing between them that couldn’t be contained. In the small talk and the big talk and in the often companionable silence, during bike rides or afternoons lying in the sun, or while swimming in the pool or lake, or play-fighting for the thickest peach in the orchard, it grew. It grew to absorb them, then to change them, and one afternoon the boy took the American to a secret place and in that place revealed his secret:

“I love this,” he said.

And the American, pretending to be dense, asked, “What?”

“Everything.”

“You mean us?”

But what he actually meant was, and the American understood because he felt it, too: “You’re the 100% perfect boy for me.” 

Life could have stopped right then or at the kiss that followed. Or when their bodies slotted together for the first time and the boy gasped, “You’ll kill me if you stop.” Or under the stars that night they drank too much, and sang too loudly in the streets, and danced like fools, and fell helplessly against each other, consumed by passion.

But life didn’t stop and the summer came to an end. And practicality resumed. The American had to go back to the States and the boy had the rest of his life. Theirs was just a fling. That was what the American told himself to make their parting easier. And if it wasn’t, time would prove it.

It was foolish to rely on time. Time did nothing but make them grow old. What the American should have done is kept his promise to stay in touch and answered the letters the boy sent and not ignored them. In retrospect, the payoff from that avoidance had been minimal. His longing was only mildly relieved and only slightly improved by sidestepping it for a substitute love. _That_ peaked at 75%: in the best moment of a good day, he achieved 75% happy, but even that was rare. And he never again felt compelled to say to another: “Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine.”

Years passed, and soon the American was thirty-two, the boy twenty-four.

One rainy afternoon, while the American was on a subway platform waiting for the next train uptown and absorbed in his phone, the boy came stumbling down the stairs soaked from the heavy rain and shivering. The American looked up and their eyes met. Instantly, their summer in Italy returned. Each felt in their soul that this was a miracle. How fateful that the stars had aligned to deliver them mutually to that moment. Because they knew:

He is the 100% perfect boy for me.

But the American had married and the boy was no longer a boy, and he had hardened. And what had once been unadulterated had become complicated and murky. They no longer shared the clarity of eight years earlier. Or the ability to be honest. Without a word, the boy looked away and the American went back to his phone, and each disappeared into a different part of the train when it arrived.

Tragic, don’t you think?

_

Then Oliver spoke.


	3. A Perfect Match

6:30 A.M.

The alarm goes off. Timmy shoots out of bed: the interview is in an hour. Panic flares when his eyes land on the empty rack where the outfits he plans to wear on a given day are hung normally the night before. Where are his clothes? He stumbles for the closet. In his rush, his feet tangle in the shirts and sweaters scattered on the floor, discarded days earlier, and he nearly falls. Then he remembers: the interview was yesterday. Today is Thursday - he has the day off. He sighs. Up is down and which day is which? So busy. It’s getting harder to keep track of everything. 

Gravity and fatigue pull at him, and he doesn’t fight the spiral down. Serendipitously, he lands near his phone. It must have fallen from his hand. He had conked out talking to Armie. Again. A simple "hi," or a long ramble on what he's having for breakfast, or the latest on whether Ford slept through the night, or a gif of a flying squirrel - whatever Armie's mood calls for is what he sends. But there’s a six-hour difference separating them, which means he's still in bed, as Timmy should be. Last he checked the time it was past two in the morning, and he and Armie had talked for longer than that. He drags himself back up to his feet. 

Next to his space on the bed is a flannel shirt he had pilfered from Armie’s closet the last time he was in Los Angeles. It’s too hot to wear it, but not for cuddling. He loops a sleeve around his neck and sniffs into the collar: just detergent and hints of Timmy’s cologne. But Timmy is good at pretending.

 

9:47 A.M.

Timmy's eyes fly open. He glances at the clock and groans. Still too early, and a headache has set in. Nausea is thick in his belly. A few more hours would cure both, but he’s exhausted all opportunities at sleep that his internal clock will allow. 

Still too early, too, for a text, but one is waiting for him. Sent at 3:37 A.M. - Armie’s time. An image. A still from _Call Me By Your Name_ , Oliver wrestling Elio to the bed in their hotel room in Rome, captioned: Remember this? Armie’s effortless shove is what Timmy remembers. Instantly, he had Timmy on his back, and _how_ that made Timmy run hot, in the middle of filming. So hot he became erect.

Armie had covered him, his bulk at once a fortress and a blanket, as he pretended to be breathless. And Timmy lay fetal on his side, desperate to recover.

But Armie may have meant the fit of his hand grooved in the hollow behind Timmy’s knee that came later, and the other effortless shove that instantly folded Timmy in half.

Timmy palms his cock, headache and nausea forgotten.

 

11:13 A.M.

Breakfast is an omelet and five slices of bacon. Timmy snaps a photo and sends it to Armie.

 

12:26 A.M.

Hot water sluices down Timmy’s back. A trickle slicks the valley of his ass when he pries the cheeks apart, intending only to scrub himself there. His middle finger has a different idea. Dry otherwise as days-old paint, the tip penetrates. The burn is sweet. Sweet as the shock on Armie’s face when audacity had made Timmy bold, as bold as Elio who had instructed Oliver to keep his gaze focused outward, while Elio fingered him as he leaned past their hotel window.

They were not so advanced. No penetration yet by the other, except for their tongues and only in their mouths, sparring like teenagers. But despite that the scene was cut from the film, the desire to imitate art had lingered. Like a brand imprinted on Timmy’s skin, like the first hot impress of Armie’s mouth on his chest - and how could he resist right then? The spread of Armie’s legs when Timmy fondled his balls, then past it, the trail to his hole. Then his hole, when it fluttered.

Tables turned, and that upward surge on his toes when Timmy’s finger landed on a spot - same, after Timmy was spun around and pressed against the shower tiles, and Armie’s finger had entered him without finesse. Tit for tat. His nipples went brick-hard and scraped achingly.

Short leap from fingers to cock, after.

He misses Armie’s cock.

 

1:03 P.M.

The rubber substitute is beginning to chafe, and Timmy went painfully pruny a half hour ago. Time to get out, except - his balls draw up tight, just one more. 

 

1:22 P.M.

Timmy drips water across the carpet and tries to shush his mother’s voice in his head scolding him.

The text has arrived. Another image - a matchbook ripped empty but for two matches and four words above it: “We’re a perfect match.”

Because four words are better than three:

I really love you.  
You’re it for me.  
Adorable goof, kiss me.  
Let me in, please.  
Come inside me, please.  
Hold me until morning.  
Keep it, but stay.  
Let’s dance, why not?

And, on second thought, it’s not so hot for the flannel shirt - _only_ the flannel shirt, that is.

 

3:56 P.M.

“That shirt looks familiar.”

“It should. It’s yours.”

“Isn’t it, like, ninety degrees there?”

“I have the AC turned up.”

“And so is your carbon footprint.”

“You’re so romantic.” But Timmy gets up to adjust the temperature, chastened. 

“Stop.”

“What?”

“My mouth is watering, suddenly. Like a pavlovian dog. I think I saw a glimpse of - ”

“Ass?”

“And scrotum. You’re naked.”

“From the waist down, yes.”

“Good grief. Are you trying to kill me?”

“Only if it’s working.”

“It’s working.”

“Should I - ”

“Yes, bend over the desk just like that. Hike up your knee. No, keep on the flannel shirt . . . .”

 

5:01 P.M.

“I need another shower.”

“I need _a_ shower. Then breakfast.”

“Lunch, you mean.”

“Breakfast, I mean, you mynx. You utter fucking distraction.”

“I live to please.”

“And indeed you do.”

“See you later?”

“Absolutely.”

 

6:48 P.M.

Dinner is a cheeseburger and fries. Timmy snaps a photo and sends it to Armie.

 

8:15 P.M.

Tomorrow, Timmy has an interview with a local newspaper. He’s unlikely to be photographed, still: a green shirt with daisies, jeans cut slim, socks with a colorful graphic sent by a fan - all are hung and laid on the clothing rack, and beneath them he props up his favorite sneakers. The alarm is set for 5:45 A.M., affording him at least two hits at the snooze button.

The side of the bed where he sleeps, unmade from this morning, has gone cold. It’s a relief against the heat of his skin. His arms and legs stretch across the left side that remains perpetually empty if Armie is not there to occupy it, as solidly as he occupies Timmy’s heart. 

At night, the longing is worse. At night, his solitude palpitates.

But then the phone rings.

The phone always rings.


	4. Keep Me In Your Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a teeny, tiny ficlet this time.
> 
> Inspired by [this song](https://youtu.be/DJypSf6d3v4).

The reasons for the break-up are many: the gap age; the distance; the irreconcilable differences. 

For example: one listens to country music; the other hates its _corn-dog_ twang. One listens to hip hop; the other tolerates _bitch bitch bitch and pussy_. No lyric actually exists, but the point is made, then argued in bed.

In bed, in Texas, in an apartment intended for the down low, and above it a gun displayed like a trophy, or worse—a Monet. At least it was pointed toward the ceiling. 

But once it had been novel. 

Once _they_ had been novel. Something like: your black licorice in exchange for my candy corn. And swallowing down _the opposite of me_ had been a challenge, but no sweat. So what if he gagged a little on its way down?

He gagged, then regurgitated, then vomited bile. And it was _vile_ , that he had ever tolerated any of it. He tears through their history the way he tears apart a birthday card that had arrived unexpectedly in the mail—the first and only, because it wasn’t that long.

So why does he feel blunted down to a negative? Drilled past existence to a pre-existence to a flint of an idea, a _maybe_ in the brain. 

_Maybe_ did they love.

He loves.

He _loves_.

The phone rings.


	5. Destination

Timmy was sprawled on the sofa in the hotel’s sitting room, dead to the world, when Armie returned from the store. Not surprising, or less so that he hadn’t collapsed sooner from exhaustion. Promotion for Beautiful Boy had been nonstop since before the film’s release, and there had been filming for Little Women, and the meetings and negotiations for other projects in between. _Oh, to be young again._ To be able to go-go-go on threadbare sleep, immune to time shifts and continental jumps. Now, jetlag and traveling frayed him, and too often he missed home.

And too often he missed this: arriving there.

Quietly, he slipped out of his shoes and set the bags on the floor. He made his steps light. Timmy did not disturb easily, but neither did Armie want to chance waking him.

The sitting room was a mess, littered with peaches, socks, sharpies, cards, pins, and other items that fans had given Timmy the last three days, at his most recent appearances. A toy train sat on top of a pile of socks, the paint on it worn and its rubber wheels showing teeth marks. A casualty? Possibly fallen out of a mother’s purse, kept there to entertain her toddler on long car rides or while waiting for their turn from the end of a line at the supermarket, but clearly not meant for Timmy. Clearly, it had ended up wrongly in his possession, and it was isolated now to remind him later to find out. To track back and return it, hopefully. Because finding it had certainly made him frown and bite his lip worriedly, stricken suddenly with unearned guilt that now a toddler was without something so obviously loved.

Sweet thing. Too sweet for his own good, Armie couldn’t help but think as he absorbed all of him: photograph on his thigh and a pen clasped loosely in his hand, mid-scrawl in mid-signature, a large stuffed peach pinched under an armpit, and hair grown long again obscuring half of his face. And that face, the circles under his shut eyes, the new and growing sharpness in his cheeks. Almost gaunt, like the hollows between his ribs, where Armie’s thumb had lingered last night and he had wondered _too much?_

But affection bloomed. And something else. An unquantifiable thing, timeless and limitless, the sum of love and the effort it took, and more, simultaneously dense and porous as the skies, and for a moment Armie couldn’t breathe.

He knelt. And swept back that hair. And traced that mouth that hung open, innocent-like.

Timmy stirred. “Hi,” he said, voice thick.

“Hi,” Armie answered, and pecked him on the cheek. “You can’t be comfortable here.” The sofa is an antique replica, beautiful in photographs, but awful on the back.

Timmy blinked open an eye. “Bed’s too far,” he mumbled.

“I can fix that.” Armie nudged an arm under his head, the other under his knees, and after an exaggerated sigh--which got him the giggle he was angling for--he lifted. Up, up, until Timmy was cradled against him, his angles relaxed and folded neatly.

“I can walk,” he said, but he slung his arms tighter around Armie and buried his face in his neck.

“Spoiled.”

“And whose fault is that?”

It was true. The distance to the bedroom was short, but Armie took his time. Warm and solid and _perennial_ were the impressions that Timmy made, carried in his arms, and Armie relished it. The shape of him. The smell of his skin. His gravity.


	6. White Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a repost--had to take down the earlier version to clean it up.

They were fucking in public, by then. In parks and alleys, in closets tightly shelved with supplies that spilled when they banged too hard against the wall (and they did, each time). A digression from routine or the mundane, chanced while stalled at the airport, or after a meal, and in between appointments. 

Or shuttered from a red-carpet event in a single-stall bathroom, the sign on the door inclusive and unisex, and the door left unlocked: that afternoon was when the impulse took. While Timmy was pressed to the cold tiles, and Armie was pressed to his back, and both were disheveled from the waist down, but pristine from the waist up, their ties knotted tight and intact at their throats. While Timmy’s panted breaths collected in a moist cloud and come trickled down his legs, and Armie continued to finger his hole. After Armie sank to his knees for a taste, his tongue fluttering: there, an idea formed. 

He palmed Timmy’s ass. “I want you to do something for me,” he said. And he dragged Timmy’s pants up his trembling legs, past the sticky slick of white and over it, covering it, concluding at his hips, and his hands circled to meet in between to button him closed.

Timmy’s mouth fell open. Disbelief shone in his eyes and . . . challenge. The event would be hours longer. And he was still required to perform. Smile, chat, indulge the famous people, the fans and press, and network--all of it while poised, sweet, charming, laughing and loose-limbed. And meanwhile he would leak, under those perfectly tailored pants. A steady trickle until it congealed. “Are you serious?” 

Very. 

And that was how it began.

_

 

Armie liked to think of it as a progression: that thin line of semen inside Timmy’s thighs from a fuck hours ago, turned to a biting itch that begged attention, the rough scrape of his fingernails to relieve it. But he couldn’t scratch, not yet, not while he stood solemn and posed for the cameras at yet another awards show. And for Armie, who stood watching not far away, but unseen, camouflaged by the crowd.

Armie liked to think of it as an evolution: from discovery. From their first, second, and tenth times, marked by a skittishness that owed to inexperience and insecurity, not prudish hesitance or fear of taking risk, because Timmy was neither and never had been. (But how exquisite it was, his light, kitten licks at the head of Armie’s cock, tentative only because he had yet to be trained, taught how to pull back his lips and watch his teeth, then _slide_ , that first time he sucked Armie’s cock.) A graduation from not quite boredom and not quite routine, but what came to be expected. After novelty lost its sheen and it was hardly a surprise when, one evening, Timmy tossed him a pair of handcuffs, his crooked grin a silent invitation. (Though his arms had been lovely stretched taught above him, blindfold wet from frustration, edged there from hours of teasing.)

 

-

After:

Sometimes, Armie tied Timmy’s hands behind his back, normally with the belt he had worn that day, while Armie had him bent over a surface. Anything solid: a table, the kitchen counter, the bathroom sink; once, on a smooth marble sculpture on a hotel patio. Armie fingered him on three or four, including a thumb, his eyes glued to that line of white. That line that marked Timmy like a boundary: do not cross here. Or like the call from a lighthouse beaming from a distance, urging. And though his skin might show signs of irritation, Armie made him wait, let the burn deepen until he imagined it rooted to the bone, calcified there so that its impression remained even after he took a washcloth to it and wiped it clean.

Armie didn’t always use a washcloth. Sometimes, it was his mouth, his tongue, and his teeth, orchestrated in a harmony that drove Timmy to babbling: _please please please_. Always, it was please.

But it wasn’t always a fuck. Not immediately. Some nights, it began with a bath. And, inevitably, it was always after dark, after the stream of people thinned, and the hyper focus on them, if they happened to be seen, blurred to mellow interest, muddied by alcohol and other stimulus, and Armie could sneak a hand to flex against Timmy’s, catch a finger in a loop, a fleeting thing to remind him: come back.

And, carefully, Armie would undress him. A button at a time, shirt untucked and a sleeve tugged down seductively. The pants he would gather, an ocean of fabric in his hands, before he slid them off, gradually so they molded to the shape of his thighs, the curve of his calves. Off, off, off, in slow motion. And so was the bath, unhurried in how Armie washed him, his hand a drag along slippery skin, lingering. The white line would have disappeared, but his fingers danced where it had been, light as a ballerina’s footsteps, tracing a word: ruined. 

_

 

Now: the lights blinded Timmy for a moment, given away by his fluttering eyes and that piercing squint that followed. He jiggled in place, naturally restless, but aggravated by that stain. Again, he brushed his thighs, and it made Armie twitch, knowing that his inseam was dirtied by now, riddled by flakes that clung to it like snow. And Armie wanted nothing more than to rip those pants off, throw Timmy to the floor and mount him right then, pound him until he squealed like a pig.

_

 

Later:

Armie made him stand naked against a bedpost. His hands were free, bound in place only by Armie’s order to keep them there, unmoving. Timmy complied insofar as they did not stray, no clutching at Armie’s wrist when a shiver overtook him, but they closed and opened in rhythm to Armie’s exploration, seeking perhaps something solid to counter it--that light-touch glide of Armie’s fingertips on his flesh, and only at the surface of it, purposeful toward a single goal: to incinerate. An anchor, perhaps, to keep him from skirting too far. But they were long past that. 

“Do you like it?” Armie asked, though he had never asked before. He blew air at Timmy’s navel and watched as the skin surrounding it prickled.

“Wh-wh-what?” Timmy stammered, widening his stance inches more to accommodate the steady climb of Armie’s hand inside his thigh.

“You know what.” He traced the underside of one pert asscheek, enjoying the slight weight of it, and the flakes of leftover come squirted there in a shocked design, Pollock-like. Briefly, he toyed with the idea of smacking it, to startle loose and freely what he was asking for and what Timmy refused to give up easily. But the withholding, too, was part of the game.

He arched beautifully when Armie’s finger entered him, his body suspended in a sigh of relief: at last.

“I hate it,” he gasped. “It’s annoying.” Like a fresh scab. Or a paper cut.

“Should we stop?” And as if Armie’s finger inside Timmy would bias him, it stilled. Waited.

Timmy bore down and clenched, tight as a vacuum pipe. Insistent as a sting. Hot and soft and open. Speared to the hilt, he moaned. “Did I say we should stop?”


End file.
